


Fragile Lines

by firelord



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mild Blood, Minor Character Death, More in the notes, Mutual Pining, werewolf!jeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:49:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27195367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firelord/pseuds/firelord
Summary: “Hi,” he says, cleaning his hands on a cloth.“Hey,” comes the answer, as Renjun walks fully into the ironmongery, “are you alone, today?”It’s a bit awkward, and it’s probably Renjun’s fault, since he was always the best conversationalist between the two of them. Jeno is not a great help, he hasn’t been for a long time, now. They grew apart, that’s undeniable, and it was mostly Jeno’s doing. He grew colder just as much as he grew bigger, and when he started working with his father he became too busy to hang out.( There's a werewolf on the run, Renjun is in love and he's not sure his childhood best friend is who he says he is. )
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Lee Jeno
Comments: 37
Kudos: 217





	Fragile Lines

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there guys, gals and nonbinary pals, how is this pandemic treating you? 
> 
> I've been working on this baby here for a little less than a month, and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I happened to watch Red Riding Hood, listened to a couple of songs and this idea, like a little birdie old enough to fly, spread its wings and departed towards the sky. RRH is an inspiration, but I'm not taking the plot from the movie, nor from any other adaptation of the story. It's mostly just me crying about woof woof Jeno, you know.  
> I need to thank my forever buddies for helping me and feeding me snacks while I was writing: Bummie, Sere and Gio. They were there for every step of the way, like they always are, and I'm so thankful that they're my friends, you have no idea.  
> Down here you'll find some additional warnings, have a good read everyone! :)
> 
> ADDITIONAL WARNINGS: there are two mentions of vomiting, one in the second scene and one after Renjun's first encounter with the wolf. One of the characters has a terminal illness, it's not specified of what kind and there are no major symptoms described, but still, please, procede with caution. The fic is T rated but there are two mentions of sex towards the end. (If you find more stuff you think should be added here, please let me know!)

The soil, up in the mountains, is muddy in Autumn.

Renjun’s little feet leave boot shaped prints behind him as he runs back to his house. Dangers seem far away when you’re a nine year old, but the thought of his mother’s ladle hitting the back of his head is enough to make him run faster, out of the forest. 

The voice behind him huffs when the branch Renjun had moved out of the way hits him in the face, but they don’t stop until they’re inside the gates. 

“You shouldn’t be out so late, you two,” the lumberjack complains as he shuts the metal gate behind them. “The wolf would love to snack on children like you.” 

“Yes, yes,” Renjun answers, because he’s nine years old and not afraid of the big wolf, “we’re going home now.”

It doesn’t matter if the man snorts at his tone, what’s important is that he lets them go so that Renjun can slip in his room before his mother notices he hasn’t come back yet. He tugs on his companion’s hand, but he doesn’t bulge. 

It’s not a surprise, nothing can petrify Jeno more than the wolf. 

Fortunately for the both of them, and especially for Renjun’s skull, their five centimeters of height difference allow him to grab Jeno’s arm and tug him out of the way. The sun hasn’t set yet, but it’s about to, and all the shutters are closed already, villagers locking their doors and placing furniture in front of them. 

When they reach Renjun’s house, only the window of his room is still open. It’s okay, it’s the only window that matters, and while Renjun is not tall enough to reach it with ease, he has practiced enough to be able to climb inside, especially when Jeno pushes him from the back. 

He jumps inside with a snort, careful to slip out of his muddy boots before he moves from the window and towards his drawers. They’re full of all the treasures he has collected over the years, but he pushes them aside to look for his bigger pouch. Once he’s found it, he undoes the red ribbon and pulls it out of the hem. 

“Here,” he says, running back to the window, “give it to me.”

When Jeno opens the palm of his hand, inside there’s a piece of carved wood. They made it together, out of a tree’s bark, and it’s supposed to represent the both of them, fighting the wolf. Renjun’s figure is bigger, Jeno’s shorter one standing behind him, further away from the beast. Carefully, Renjun slips the ribbon inside the hole they made in a corner, and ties up the edges. 

“Here it is, now you’re protected forever.”

Jeno brings it down to look at it better. He smiles.

“It’s so pretty.”

“It doesn’t have to be pretty, it just has to be powerful.” Renjun rolls his eyes, annoyed and a little fond. “Now go, the sun has nearly set.”

Jeno’s head snaps back up, like he forgot about the curfew until that moment. He audibly gulps, but he clutches tight his new amulet and runs away from Renjun’s window, waving his hand in salute. 

Renjun watches him go until he turns the corner, then he shuts the window close and hides his boots in the back of his wardrobe. Once he’s slipped out of his coat and looks enough like he’s been in his room the whole time, he heads to the kitchen. Because Renjun is nine years old and his mother scares him more than the wolf when she’s angry. 

He does get hit with her ladle when she gets her hands on him, which is the worst thing that can happen to him inside his house.

Outside, instead, that night the wolf attacks.

｡:°🌙°:｡

Eleven years since the last attack, Renjun is a twenty year old and nothing scares him more than the wolf.

Not enough to stay secluded in his house, but enough that he double checks all the locks on the door before he goes to sleep. 

He’s not alone in this, everyone repeats the same precautions every day, even if no one has seen the beast for more than a decade. It doesn’t matter, not when they all saw the state of the body. The wolf never said it was gone, and since no one killed it, it could always come back. 

It’s Winter, now, and they all look at the snow with apprehension, scouting for pawprints and red drops of blood. 

The only things on the snowy path, for now, are the prints of Renjun’s boots. Bigger than the ones he had as a child, but not as big as his father’s. Nature failed him in that sense, when all the kids he used to tower over started to grow taller than him. Donghyuck was the first, and that’s why he didn’t reach great heights either. The last one was Jisung, because he’s still a kid and he had his growth spurt not too long ago.

Still, Renjun is now one of the shortest boys in the village, and one of the thinnest too. His father was disappointed that he couldn’t help carrying flour sacks into the shop, but his mother is content that his pretty smile is enough to lure customers into buying more of their bread.

As the only bakery in the village, everyone buys their goods. As his mother says, though, what makes the difference is how much they buy, when there are so few families around.

In the morning, Renjun is asked to deliver orders to the few customers that are too busy to stop by the shop. It’s not a difficult trip, not when it doesn’t take more than ten minutes to walk from one border to the other of the main walls. He grabs his basket, puts on his cloak and heads out. 

His first stop is an old lady. She sews clothes for the few men that don’t have wives to do that job. She can barely walk, but she can see well enough to hold the needle, and that’s all she needs to make the handful of coins under her pillow last until the end. 

“Good morning, dear,” she says when he pushes the door open, “I was waiting for you.”

“I know you were. How are you today, granny?”

There are two silver coins on the table, ready for him to pick them up and leave, but he enjoys talking to his customers, especially when they’re old and not so rude. He takes out her order from his basket, then grabs a handkerchief to wrap the loaves from the drawer under the table.

“Same old, same old.” She watches him as he places the bread close to the fireplace, where it’ll stay warm until she’s hungry enough to eat it. Her small, black eyes don’t leave him, and Renjun would feel uncomfortable under that stare if they didn’t have the same conversation every single morning. “Why are you still wearing that old thing, again? I could make you a new one.”

“I like it.” He tugs his cloak tighter around him. It’s a dark red color, a gift from his late grandmother. “Also, it’s still wearable, it wouldn’t make sense to get a new one.”

He busies himself with folding some pants that were laying around, already mended, while the old woman keeps complaining about the weather, the people, and her age. One pair he recognizes, and the thought of the boy he saw wearing them makes him smile. 

When he’s procrastinated enough, he grabs the money on the table and bids goodbye to the granny, going back to his commissions. There’s not much today to deliver today, and the cold weather makes him walk faster on the snowy street.

“Ah! You’re here, finally.” 

A loud voice welcomes him as he enters the only real other shop of the village. It’s a grocery store, and the only contact between this place and the bigger towns in the valley. Renjun can’t say he likes the owner, on the contrary, he dislikes him with a purpose, but it’s the richest family around, and their arrival did good to Renjun’s parents' small business. 

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he says, even though he doesn’t mean it, and puts his basket on a neighboring table to take this order out and be on his way as soon as possible, “I’ll come earlier tomorrow.”

“You better. In this village you’re so lazy it’s like being up in the early morning scares you. Is it that wolf legend that you use as an excuse?”

When Renjun says that this man is one of the worst he ever met in his life, he says it for a reason. Since his family moved here less than a decade ago, he never dealt with an attack of the wolf, and his continuous mocking makes Renjun’s blood boil. He can’t give him a piece of his mind, not when he hands him a tall pile of coins over the counter.

“Maybe it’s just the cold, sir.”

“Yeah, well, the morning cold doesn’t kill anyone, it’s good for the spirit and wakes up the mind. Mark, take this upstairs!”

Mark, the son of the owner, comes to do as said with all the nonchalance of someone that grew up with a terrible parent, and learned to shake everything off. He waves at Renjun before he disappears, because Mark is actually a very nice guy. He’s the most sought after bachelor of the area, and Renjun would’ve also thought about him as something different than a friend if his heart wasn’t already taken.

And about that, there’s no reason to stay here longer when he’s got his money in his pocket. He forces a smile out before leaving, because he knows it makes him look sweet, and that’s the whole reason he’s the one tasked with these commissions every morning.

He walks even faster than he did before — not because of the cold, it’s his heart that’s biting at his heels, excited — and he stops in front of the last door. The sound of metal clinking against metal comes loud and clear, and Renjun hopes he finds the person he was hoping to see the whole morning on the other side.

When he pushes the door open quietly, slipping inside, he finally sees him.

Jeno has his back turned towards him, from where he’s dipping a piece in a bucket of water. It’s hot in here, and his shirt sticks to his back, showing the outline of his muscles. 

The small kid who used to play in the woods with him is so far away, he feels like a completely different person sometimes.

While he’s busy considering how to announce his presence without combusting on the spot, Jeno must notice him first, because he puts his tools down and turns around. 

“Hi,” he says, cleaning his hands on a cloth. 

“Hey,” comes the answer, as Renjun walks fully into the ironmongery, “are you alone, today?”

“Father is out, he’ll be back for lunch.”

“I see.”

It’s a bit awkward, and it’s probably Renjun’s fault, since he was always the best conversationalist between the two of them. Jeno is not a great help, he hasn’t been for a long time, now. They grew apart, that’s undeniable, and it was mostly Jeno’s doing. He grew colder just as much as he grew bigger, and when he started working with his father he became too busy to hang out. 

There was a period of time where Renjun questioned their friendship and if Jeno started to dislike him in any way, but there was still a warmth in his eyes when he looked at him, a gentleness in their hands when they touched, that kept Renjun hoping for more. Whatever it was that pushed Jeno away from him, Renjun trusted him to work it out and come back, his arms were always open. 

Possibly before either of them died of old age.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t Renjun who attempted again a conversation. While he was cleaning the table of some scrap iron, Jeno spoke to him.

“Did you have many commissions?”

Small talk is better than nothing, Renjun supposes. It’s the last thing he wants to do, but he places his basket on the table and takes out Jeno’s order.

“No, only the usual. The old granny always asks for bread for lunch, and the asshole at the grocery shop… he’s terrible, how can he have a son like Ma—”

A metal clang interrupts him. Startled, Renjun moves to Jeno’s side to see what happened. One of the pieces he was discarding is on the floor, but instead of picking it up, the boy is staring at it as if it physically hurt him. His muscles are taut, rigid, and when Renjun looks at his hand, he sees that his fists are clenched. 

“Jeno? Are you ok?”

He asks, tentatively extending a hand to touch him. Jeno flinches away and Renjun tries, he tries not to feel hurt about it, but it’s difficult when the distance between them feels wider than the forest. 

“Yes,” he says after a moment, relaxing. He looks embarrassed at his own outburst, a bit shameful. “It’s just… I hate him. He took it out on dad, yesterday.”

Mr Lee, the blacksmith, used to be a big man before he fell ill. Now, instead, it’s easy for people like Mark’s father, who wouldn’t lose a chance to start a fight, to pick on him and his job. And since everyone knows everything in such a small place, Renjun is aware that the man has been bugging Jeno’s dad for a discount, complaining about the competition with cheaper craftsmen in the valley. 

If he’s still going on about it, it means he didn’t get him to lower the price yet. 

“I know, I know.” 

Renjun says, trying to sound comforting. It’s Jeno, this time, that touches him first. A hand on his arm, for one single moment, before he’s gone. Skin still tingling, he watches Jeno’s back disappear behind the door to grab money for his order. 

Renjun wonders how long he’s going to watch him walk away before he finally lets him in.

｡:°🌙°:｡

The moment he wakes up, Renjun knows something is wrong.

People are screaming outside his window, someone is crying. A woman, maybe, or a child. His mother opens the door of his room, frazzled, fear clouding her eyes like winter fog.

“It attacked again.”

｡:°🌙°:｡

No one at the village liked Mark’s father, not even his own family, but they didn’t expect to find his dead body right outside the gates with a deep gash in his chest. The whole village gathers around it, arguing out loud.

“It was a wild animal.”

“Are you blind? Can’t you see how deep that wound is? It was the wolf.”

“But we haven’t seen the wolf in years!”

“We haven’t seen any bear either, but the wolf was here once and it could still be.”

The body, pale and dead and surrounded by a red aura of blood, overlaps in Renjun’s mind with the one that was found when he was a child. He suddenly gets the urge to throw up. There’s a tight grip on his upper arm, his mother’s hand holding him up as if she’s not shaking herself.

“Let’s try to calm down, shall we?” The head of the lumberjacks, Donghyuck’s old uncle, speaks above the others, and they all quiet down under his baritone voice. “We don’t know what killed him, so there’s no use arguing about it. What was he doing outside at that hour, anyway?”

All heads turn towards Mark, as if they just realized that he’s been there the whole time. His mother fainted as soon as she saw her husband’s body and was taken away, but he hasn’t moved an inch from where he was standing an hour ago. If it wasn’t paler than usual, it wouldn’t look much different from normal Mark. 

“He said he had a business meeting.”

His words are final, he doesn’t elaborate more, but there’s no need to do so. Everyone knows who his father was discussing business with, these days. The group of heads turn again, but they can’t seem to find who they were looking for. They settle on Jeno, instead.

“Where’s your father, boy?”

“He didn’t go, yesterday, he couldn’t even get out of the bed, let alone walk.” 

Had it been any other man in the village, someone would speak up and ask for proof. In this case, though, where everyone has seen the blacksmith wither over the years like a drowning flower, Jeno’s pained words are enough to bring the subject back to its original topic.

“So he waited for Mr. Lee outside, he even got out of the gates to try and find him, but the beast found him first.”

“We still don’t know if it’s the  _ beast _ !” A voice calls from the crowd. 

“We don’t have enough experience to evaluate that.” Again, the lumberjack takes the lead. “Anyone leaving for the valley today?”

The shaking hand that comes up splits the crowd in two, revealing a short woman, not much younger than Renjun’s mum. 

“Me.”

She sounds like it pains her to get involved in the situation. Unfortunately for her, they don’t have another choice. 

“Good. Once you’re there, spread the word of what happened today. People there will find someone useful. We’ll all put our money in, and if there’s really a beast, we’ll pay to have it killed. Any objections?”

The crowd answers with silence. 

“Well then, let’s move him away from here.”

The hand that was holding him up tugs him away, making space for a group of villagers to come closer and examine the situation. Renjun has no intention of touching him, so he follows his mother back towards their house. 

A pair of eyes follows him, and when he turns around Jeno’s dark orbs are staring on his own. 

“Darling, let’s go, it’s so cold outside.”

As they walk back through the gate, Renjun notices something poking out of the snow. Holding his breath as he recognizes it, he quickly pockets it and straightens back up, following his mother without another word. 

｡:°🌙°:｡

The following morning, after a sleepless night for everyone at the village, a group of men rides past the gates. 

They’re rich, richer than people usually are on these mountains, and their capes flutter in the wind as they get off their horses and walk into the pub. Soon, Yangyang tugs at his sleeve to run after them, and most of the village finds itself cramped in a corner of the big room, not wanting to get too close to the newcomers, but not wanting to lose a word either. 

“We heard your story, we heard of your past troubles,” speaks one of the men, sipping the beer that Mr Na poured for him, “and we’re convinced that you’re dealing with a werewolf.”

The pause that follows should’ve been filled with surprised gasps, but it’s empty, heavy silence falling on the room instead. These men must think of them as a village of fools, if they think they can shock them with such a revelation. 

“What you may not know,” the man continues, “is that werewolves keep a human form during the day, so they can disguise themself between their victims. Now, the beast  _ could _ be someone hiding in the woods, but it’s more likely that it lives here, with you all.”

“This can’t be, we know each other too well, we would’ve noticed if one of us was the wolf.”

“Then you haven’t looked well enough!” Another man slams his glass on the counter. “If you did, then you would’ve seen through the beast’s cunning ways. I’m not surprised that you didn’t, though, werewolves are as smart as they’re bloodthirsty, so they probably tricked you well enough, waiting for the right moment to strike.”

“Anyway, here are some practical instructions: no one leaves the village until we kill it, no one gets out at night unless they want an arrow in their skull. Am I clear?”

“What are we doing with the winter celebrations?”

“The what?”

The first man asks, but the girl that spoke hides behind her mother as he turns to her. 

“It’s a religious celebration, but it’s more like a fest to celebrate winter. The village comes together and we dance all night long. It’s in ten days.” Jaemin’s father explains as he refills the men’s glasses.

“If we can kill the beast before then, that’s good. Otherwise, that will be the perfect opportunity to hunt it down. Other question?”

“How will you kill it, once you have your hands on it?”

Renjun didn’t notice that Jeno was there, but he couldn’t mistake his voice for anyone else’s. Turning around, he finds him standing against the wall, a bit distant from the rest of the crowd. Even as Renjun keeps staring, he doesn’t look back. 

“Silver, boy, is what we use with werewolves. We’ll cut its head off with a silver sword, and that will reveal its true form to all of you. Now, if you have other questions, you can ask my partner, Eunhyuck, or me, or any of our men. I’m Donghae, by the way. We’ll now discuss our compensation.”

After that, Renjun slips out of the room, together with other people. 

“You really think there’s a werewolf in the village?” Yangyang askes, accompanying him back to the bakery. 

“Who knows,” now that they’re out he feels Jeno’s eyes stare back at him for a moment, before he walks away. “There may as well be.”

｡:°🌙°:｡

Life at the village doesn’t change much, even if the presence of the armed men at the gate weights like an approaching bloody disaster. 

When he tries to voice his concerns, one evening, his mother shuts him up harshly. 

“They buy a lot of bread,” she says, “if they stay long enough we will afford to finally renovate the roof.”

And so, Renjun doesn’t say anything about it again. 

It’s not that he doesn’t trust them to be a skilled group of hunters, he just doesn’t know how these people, who never lived in this forest, could be able to stop the beast once it pops out from between the trees. Are they trained? Likely. Do they know the woods better than the people that lived here all their lives? Definitely not. If no villagemen were able to kill the wolf for years, how could they?

(Yangyang disagrees, he says that Yukhei told him that Jaemin told him that his father told him that these hunters have roamed this area already. Renjun still doesn’t think it’s enough.)

When screams come, one night, less than an hour after the sun sets, Renjun can’t say that he was expecting it, but he can’t act surprised either. 

He knows he shouldn’t be out at that hour, but it’s still early enough that the guards will let him go if they catch him walking down the streets, and he didn’t have any malicious intentions. He was at Donghyuck’s, helping him bake a cake for the winter celebrations — they’re in a couple of days, the last fragment of normality the village is holding to with trembling hands. Was he supposed to realize that it was getting late? Yes, but it didn’t happen, there’s nothing he can do about it.

When screams come, he’s still far from home. It doesn’t take long to get back, but he doesn’t want anyone to see him and think he has something to do with the beast. Hiding himself in his cloak, hood pulled up in front of his face, he runs between buildings, fast and light on his feet like he did when he was a kid. 

He used to do it with Jeno, holding his hand because he was too slow and would be left behind without him, but Jeno has stopped running with him for a long time now. Without his companion, the fun of it got lost quickly. 

Somehow, he still manages to sneak unseen behind houses and columns. The house is near, he can already see the wooden walls, and he can cut it short if he passes by Miss Zhong’s stable. It’s right between her house and her brother’s, and if Renjun tries to go around it he’ll have to pass by the main street. The animals usually sleep at this hour, and they’re accustomed enough to human presence that he won’t bother them much, sprinting past them. When he gets there, though, a shiver goes down his spine, petrifying him. 

There’s something between the sheeps; they’re bleating softly, agitated. Whatever it is that’s hiding behind them, it terrified them enough to keep them quiet. Renjun can’t go forward, but he can’t even go backward, the risk of someone finding him is too high. 

Then a couple of big, dark eyes stare back at him. The sheeps move as the figure comes forward, a mountain of dark fur and many,  _ many teeth _ . It’s bigger than a normal wolf, nearly as big as Renjun when it’s on its four feet. There’s blood in its mouth, it drips on the floor when it growls at Renjun. 

Time stops for a moment. The beast doesn’t strike, Renjun doesn’t run away. It’s like his feet are glued to the ground, fear keeping him in place. 

When the wolf moves forward again, it’s slow. Renjun sees it stagger, and notices a deep gush in its front leg. It’s injured. Its teeth glow white under the reflection of the moon as it snarls at him, and Renjun doesn’t wait to investigate more. Once his muscles jump back into action he sprints back where he came from, not stopping until he’s in the middle of the main street and his legs give out. 

People don’t seem to notice him, they’re all running to the gate, screaming to each other.

_ Run back home _ , Renjun wants to scream,  _ the wolf is inside the village _ , but words get stuck in his throat. An arm wraps around his shoulders as he gets up, and under his father’s strong hold he follows the flow to the gate. As the realization of his encounter slowly sinks in, adrenaline subsiding, he starts to tremble, warm tears freezing in their path down his cheek.

When he sees the body, this time, he turns to the side and throws up. 

-

Renjun doesn’t sleep that night, and not even the following one. 

For a full day he doesn’t get out of his sheets, and his mother takes his place in the shop. She doesn’t ask about it, she probably thinks the state of the guard’s body is what shocked him this badly, and she’s partly right. Renjun has no intention to tell her about his encounter with the wolf.

Compared to Mark’s father, this body looked much more like the one that was found when Renjun was a kid. The blood, the bitten flesh, the state of the viscera, it truly looked like the beast had feasted on the poor man’s body.  _ What a terrible death _ , Renjun thinks, curled in a fetal position,  _ I wonder if they’ll manage to sew him back together _ . 

Then there’s the intrusive thought, the one that floats back to the surface as many times as Renjun pushes it down. If the beast got in the village and no one noticed it, then the hunters were right. It  _ is _ someone that lives here, it could be your neighbor, your friend, even your cousin. It’s someone Renjun knows, probably someone he smiles at every morning. Processing that thought is extremely painful, it’s what keeps him mostly awake at night.

The morning of the second day, he decides that he needs to stop worrying his parents and gets out of the house. 

He doesn’t feel safe in the village, but the more time he spends closed in his room, the more unsafe he feels even in his own bed. He saw that beast, he’s sure it could be able to take down his door if it wanted.

So he goes to do his daily commissions. The granny is less talkative than usual, and Renjun appreciates that, because he doesn’t feel much different. His second stop is at Mark’s shop, and he finds him standing behind the counter. 

“Hey,” he salutes, and the boy looks up from the book of accounts he was writing on.

“Hi.”

He looks tired, his cheeks a bit sunken in, but he still smiles when he sees him come in. Times must be hectic for him right now, and Renjun has struggled to approach him these past few days. Mark and his father didn’t get along at all, but he was still his father. 

“I brought you these,” he says, placing his order on the counter. “How are things going, here?”

“I’m holding up.” Mark scrolls his shoulders, like they didn’t find a mauled body just two nights ago. “Mum's not feeling well in this situation, though. She doesn’t even get out of bed.”

Renjun understands her. 

“I’m sorry to hear that, but I’m sure the hunters will solve everything soon.” Or at least he hopes. “Have a good day, Mark.”

He’s already walking out of the shop, but he can still hear Mark’s muttered  _ “I’ll try.” _

He doesn’t have his usual spring in his steps as he walks to the ironmongery, but he’s still walking as fast as he can. More than any other day, he needs to see Jeno, to make sure he’s alright. It’s irrational, really, because Jeno has been bigger and stronger than him for years, now, but still he feels the need to make sure that he’s safe, that the wolf didn’t hurt him. Jeno was really scared of the wolf when they were children. 

He pushes the door open, but he finds the room to be empty.

“Jeno? Mr Lee? Anyone here?”

“I’m coming!”

It’s Jeno’s voice, coming from upstairs, where both him and his father live. When he comes down, he’s dressed differently than usual. It’s very hot in front of the furnace, so Jeno tends to wear summer clothes even in the middle of winter when he’s working. 

Today, though, his shirt has long sleeves.

“Did I disturb you?”

“No, no, you didn’t. I was helping dad because he’s not feeling very well today.”

Renjun doesn’t pry. He would love to stay and chat with Jeno, but he understands that the boy — the  _ man _ — has more important stuff to attend to. 

“I understand. I brought your order for today.”

It’s sitting in his basket, still warm, together with the last one he has yet to deliver. The hunters are a recent addition to his daily clients. He makes sure that the wrapping is still intact, and he offers it to Jeno, who pushes a pile of coins towards him on the table. 

During the exchange, Renjun can’t help but notice that the sleeve of Jeno’s shirt is stained red in a couple of points, like blood is transpiring from a bandage underneath it. Suddenly, a line of thought forms in his mind, back to a beast injured in its front paw and to Donghae’s words:  _ the beast lives here, with you all _ . His breath catches in his throat, stuck between asking him what happened to his arm and what he was doing two nights ago. 

_ Don’t be stupid _ , he thinks, bringing his mind back to the right path just as Jeno notices him staring. In a second, his arm disappears behind his back. 

“I need to go back up,” he says, gesturing to the stairs.

“Sure, sorry if I kept you long.”

“It’s fine.”

Jeno’s dark eyes stare into his own, intense. Big and dark like another pair of eyes that stared at him recently. The color, the one that kept sleep away from Renjun for two nights, is exactly the same. 

Trapping a gasp before it can make itself audible, he grabs his basket and walks back out of the door, without looking back.

｡:°🌙°:｡

The hunters found a place to stay at the inn, but they use another room to plan their moves. It’s there that Renjun delivers bread every morning, ready for lunch. 

This time, he stops right in front of the door, panting softly into the material of his scarf. It doesn’t matter how fast he walks, that pair of dark eyes keeps following him. Jeno’s or the wolf’s, he’s not even sure anymore. It probably doesn’t make a difference, not when Jeno hurt his arm just like the wolf was bleeding from its front leg.

It’s ridiculous, though, because this is Jeno, not a random villager Renjun doesn’t know very well. Jeno was terrified of the wolf as a kid, and he’s too young to have been the wolf back when the first body was found. 

Renjun’s brain is in overdrive, and while a part of it knows that he’s not thinking lucidly, the other is rolling down a slope too slippery to climb back up. 

Does he even know Jeno all that well, or is he just remembering the boy he used to be when they were kids? Jeno stopped talking to him the way he used to do, and his small affections mean nothing when Renjun doesn’t know if there were ever real feelings behind them.

He’s about to knock on the door when he hears talking on the other side, and he can’t help but eavesdrop.

“It was horrible, sir, the way it was eating his organs while the man layed there, dead… I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.”

“I don’t doubt it. And then what happened?”

“It looked up when it heard me arrive, but it didn’t attack me. I think it was full, and it felt too slow to strike, so he just stared at me and then disappeared in the woods.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes, sir, that yellow-eyed beast disappeared as fast as it came.”

｡:°🌙°:｡

Another sleepless night for Renjun, but at this point he’s getting used to it. Sleep won’t catch him, not when he’s too busy turning in his bed thinking about the hunter’s words. 

Two points don’t connect: first of all, Renjun saw the wolf in the village, so there’s no way it ran in the woods after attacking the guard. The second, most confusing thought, is that the wolf that Renjun saw had dark eyes. They were such a dark color, nearly black, that they couldn’t be confused for yellow. 

Why would the man lie, though, and say that he saw the wolf when he didn’t? He’s one of the hunters, lying about it would be counterproductive to the chase. 

A scary thought passes through Renjun’s mind:  _ what if there are two of them _ ?

He suppresses it, screaming in his pillow. It will already be hard to kill one of those, let alone two. 

His eyes fall on his nightstand, where the thing he picked up from the snow, all those days ago, has been waiting to be returned to its owner. It’s a piece of tree bark, with a children's drawing carved on it. On top, through a whole, a red ribbon is closed in a knot.

It’s only in the early morning hours that exhaustion prevails, pulling him into a dreamless sleep, and the last image his mind conjures are a pair of big, dark eyes. 

｡:°🌙°:｡

After a long discussion, the heads of the village decide that the winter celebrations will be held. People are either sceptical about it or overly excited, but Renjun is mostly concerned about Donghyuck having to bake another cake, because it didn’t come out as good as the last one and now he’s sulking. 

“Come on,” he tries with the comforting route, “it’s only a little less pretty, the taste is just as good and everyone will love it.”

“I don’t know,” is the answer he gets as they walk to the big square at the center of the village. “I really wanted to make a good impression with this.”

“Oh, shut up. He’ll like it anyway.”

Donghyuck mumbles something back, but Renjun’s ears can’t catch it. They pause to let a chariot of wood overtake them, the conversation seemingly coming to a halt. It doesn’t last long, neither him nor Donghyuck good with prolonged silences.

“What about you, though, still hoping for Jeno to wake up from dreamland and ask you to dance?”

Renjun pushes his shoulder, a very risky move when someone is carrying a cake, but he doesn’t know how else to answer. He doesn’t even know how he’ll approach Jeno tonight, not when a part of him still thinks he’s the werewolf. There’s his amulet in his pocket, ready to be returned after so many days. In the back of his head, his sixth sense tells him that something will happen tonight. Good or bad, he doesn’t know. 

Dinner starts early, before the sun sets, and everyone eats to their heart’s content as more and more meat is roasted on the big bonfire. Renjun enjoys it to the fullest, sitting between Donghyuck and Yangyang and laughing as they drink beer together. Even Jeno sits with them, but he’s far from Renjun, too far to talk to him. They exchange glances, though, and Renjun can feel his eyes on him even when he’s turned to the other side.

It’s a wanted kind of attention, one that makes a blush rise on his cheek. He hopes the cold disguises it, together with the sky as it turns darker and darker. 

He’s been pitifully crushing on Jeno for so long that no werewolf could ruin these moments. 

“Come on, Renjun, it’s time to dance!”

Says Yangyang, tugging him into the crowd. Some older couples have the center of the dance floor, immersed in complicated choreographies, but they’re soon switched to group dances once more people join them. The music from the accordion is loud, but not enough to overcome the laughter of the villagers as they cheer together. Nearly the whole village is present tonight, even the elders are sitting on the side, well warmed up in woolen blankets. Mark’s mother decided not to come, as well as Mr Lee, and most of the hunters didn’t take part in the celebrations. They’re the only absents, though, and they’re losing all the fun. 

After some songs are performed all together, the group splits. People are dancing with their loved ones now, and Renjun holds tight to his friends, all of them too tipsy not to get lost in the crowd. Donghyuck is the first to disappear, but Renjun isn’t worried, he’s probably having much more fun now. He lets go of Yangyang’s hand at one point, and they inevitably separate. 

Renjun is too awkward to dance by himself, but as much as he turns around, he can’t manage to find anyone to join. He’s about to leave the crowd, walk back to the fireplace and find some water to drink, when someone pats him on his shoulder. 

Jeno looks just as beautiful under the moonlight as he does under the sun. The fire casts shadows on his face, accentuates his features, makes him a bit too handsome to look at. And even then, Renjun can’t look away. 

“Do you want to dance with me?” He asks. 

“Sure!” Renjun answers.

Jeno’s hands are warmer than his own, a bit clammy, but they feel so sure as they tug him back into the crowd that Renjun doesn’t want to ever let them go. 

When he imagined his encounter with Jeno, tonight, he thought they would sit together and talk. Renjun would’ve asked Jeno about his arm, about his lost amulet, and — and Renjun imagined himself crying at this point in the conversation — he would’ve asked what he’s running away from. Is it from him? Or is it something else? 

Instead, the music is too loud to start a conversation, and Renjun is too weak to let go of a moment like this, one in which Jeno twirls him around as they try not to step on each other’s feet, song after song. At one point they’re nearly run over by a group of children, who eventually just disappear to play somewhere else after laughing in their ears for a couple of minutes. For the first time in years, Renjun sees Jeno genuinely smile. 

It’s the prettiest smile in the whole village, Jeno’s, and always has been. Everyone wanted to pinch his cheeks, back when he was a kid, and after he was gone they would turn around and say “ _ what a pretty smile, Jeno Lee has. _ ” Eventually, Jeno’s smiles became a rare sight to see, and ever since his father fell ill he actually stopped showing many positive emotions. 

Just like that, Renjun feels like someone is fueling the flames in his heart, burning brightly all inside him. He steps closer, grabs Jeno’s shirt at his sides in a silent question. 

_ Are you burning too, for me?  _

The chaos around them quiets down, the two of them isolated in a soap bubble, rainbow colors reflecting all around and through them. Maybe Jeno is shining, or maybe it’s Renjun’s mind that’s playing tricks, because when strong arms wrap around him his grip on reality starts slipping through his fingers. 

It’s in Jeno’s dark eyes, his  _ eyes _ , as big and clear as they are when they meet Renjun’s own, and without a second thought he cups the boy’s face in his hands and brings him down for a kiss.

Jeno’s lips are a bit chapped from the cold, trembling slightly with emotion as they press on his own, and there’s a desperation behind them that belongs to Renjun too. He yearned so much for this, it takes him a lot of strength not to cry. He doesn’t want to cry because this is a good moment, something to remember tonight when he’ll turn in his bedsheets touching his lips like a fool, but he also spent so many years wondering if this will ever happen, that now he’s overwhelmed. 

He holds onto Jeno tightly, arms moving to wrap around his shoulders, anchoring himself down. Renjun has never seen the sea, but he imagines that getting swayed by the waves must not feel much different from this. 

When they pause for air, cold noses bumping softly against each other, Renjun takes a step back to look at his lover’s face. He didn’t expect to find him teary eyed, but it’s so cute that Renjun cooes at him, hands rising to dry the tears at the corners or his eyes. Not even the fire can hide the blush on Jeno’s face, and it doesn’t matter if he throws his head back like the big puppy that he is, Renjun is wrapped too tight around him to let him go. They laugh together, like they did as children, hugging tightly as the world goes on around them, song after song. 

Time doesn’t stop as long as they wish, though, because at one point Jeno stiffens suddenly. Rising from where his head was resting on his shoulder, Renjun searches his face and finds that the other’s attention has shifted, eyes focused on a point in the dark, far away. 

“Jeno?”

The arms around him tighten for a moment before they let go, the cold winter air freezing where the warm touch had been. 

“I need to go.”

There’s a kiss, short and sweet, and then Renjun is left alone in the crowd, the last words Jeno whispered against his lips still dripping on the point of his tongue.

_ Go home _ .

What does that mean? And why did Jeno leave him just like that?

Not feeling like dancing anymore, he walks back to his seat, glad that no one’s there to ask him what he was doing or worse, tease him about it. He pours what’s left of his beer into Yangyang’s goblet, opting for some water to clear his mind, and sits down.

It’s probably because he’s out of the chaos, where the music is not as loud, that he hears it first. It started at least twenty minutes after Renjun sat down, and at first it sounded like a rumble of thunder, but as it goes on for longer his ears recognize it for what it is: a  _ growl _ . 

Jumping to his feet, he turns around, heart beating wildly in his chest, and sees a figure in the dark. It’s hidden, but the pair of yellow eyes that stare back at him is enough to make him freeze in terror. He doesn’t let it deter him, though, and just as he hears the music quiet down for a song change he screams with all the air in his lungs.

“ _ WOLF! _ ”

And then, not a second later, the beast jumps towards the crowd.

｡:°🌙°:｡

Chaos erupts, people start running everywhere, away from the wolf as it starts chasing those that are too slow to find shelter. They disperse away from the square, into little streets, but they’re like mice in a labyrinth with a cat chasing behind, licking its whiskers. 

“Go towards the church! It won’t enter sacred grounds!”

Screams someone, but Renjun is not sure how trustable they are. Turning back to check behind himself, he sees his parents enter a house, carrying children in their arms, and turns towards a smaller street. He can’t join them now, not yet, not when he doesn’t know where Jeno is. 

The streets are too dark to see well what’s happening around him, torches tore from the walls and dropped in the snow. He nearly steps on a corpse, and he thanks the darkness that he can’t see who that is. 

He can hear the screams of the hunters in front of him, roaming the streets, following the cries and the pained screams. 

“It went this way!” One of them yells, and he recognizes Donghae’s voice. “Look for Eunhyuck, we’re bringing it back to the gate and cornering it.”

Without realizing it, he finds himself in front of his house, panting heavily when he sees a big figure trying to hide behind a bush — it’s useless, when it’s so huge. The thing  _ whimpers _ , and it’s not a human sound. A pair of big, dark eyes stare back at Renjun, blood dirtying the dark fur of the wolf. 

Renjun runs to his door, opens it and, with no hesitation, he lets the beast inside. 

They stumbles all the way to his room, leaving a trail of bloodied paws behind them, and whimpers again. They stops right in front of his door, as if waiting for him to open it.

“Wait,” he says, confident that they can understand him, and runs to the bathroom to retrieve water, some cloths and healing herbs. First he cleans the blood from the floor, removing all the traces of the passage of the wolf, then he goes to open the door. 

Inside, the wolf starts shifting. It’s not a pretty sight, watching fur retrieve back into skin and bones snap into different positions. Judging from the way they cry, it must hurt as much as it looks like it does. 

Once he finished shifting — just as Renjun expected — Jeno lays on the floor, half curled in a fetal position. There’s a deep gush running from his shoulder, and he’s panting softly, gritting his teeth. Renjun rushes to his side, shushes him when he growls in pain. 

“I’m here,” he says, running his hand through Jeno’s hair as he starts to clean his wound. “We’re inside, we’re safe.”

It doesn’t matter if confusion and an impending headache are pushing against the front of his brain, Renjun is sure of one thing: Jeno would never hurt him, he’s injured and he needs his help. He carefully cleans the skin and applies the herbs paste all over it to prevent infections, then he bandages him up tight. The older wound on his harm has already healed, but he still checks the rest of his body for new ones.

It’s then that, with a certain embarrassment, he notices that Jeno is completely naked. He doesn’t let it deter him, even if the blush on his cheeks is quite telling, and uses the other cloths to clean the gross of the dirt and blood from Jeno’s skin. They used to shower together when they were kids, but Jeno’s body has changed a lot since then, and Renjun is not used to seeing him like this, so exposed and vulnerable. 

There’s no way he can move him from the floor, let alone dress him up, if the boy doesn’t carry some of his own weight. Jeno doesn’t complain when he tugs him forward, he’s still awake enough to respond, but he’s too weak to move much, slouching over Renjun’s figure. With a huff, he carefully drops him on the bed, covering him with the blankets. 

Quickly, he cleans up the room, and grabs a change of clothes from his wardrobe. They’ll be a bit tight on him, but they should still fit well enough. He places them on the nightstand, and looks at Jeno’s sleeping figure. He’s so angelic, like this, like he went to bed on his own after a long day in the ironmongery, his stomach full with warm dinner, taken care of by loving hands that caressed his face until he fell asleep. 

With a sigh, Renjun turns to walk away from the room, but a hold on his wrist stops him. Jeno’s voice is rough with sleep, but still firm as he speaks.

“Stay.”

Nodding, Renjun grabs Jeno’s hand and brings it up to his lips for a soft kiss, then he places it back on the blankets. He goes to discard his own clothes, leaves his coat hanging outside of his door, to tell his parents that he’s home in case they come back to look for him. He knows they trust that he found shelter, that they believe he’ll be safe. Wearing his undergarments, he slips under the blankets next to Jeno, and a hand comes to tug him towards his uninjured side. 

Outside, the screams have quietened down, but someone is crying. They’re probably counting the bodies on the streets. Under his breath, Renjun prays they caught it, the real beast. 

Lulled by the even rhythm of Jeno’s breaths, he falls asleep.

｡:°🌙°:｡

The first thing Renjun does the following morning, after shaking Jeno awake for a short time, is getting him to tell him where he left his clothes the previous night before he shifted.

It’s a thought that occurred to him in the early morning, the idea that someone could find Jeno’s clothes and connect him to the beast — which, actually, wouldn’t be so far fetched, but it would be the wrong wolf! 

So he runs all the way to the hole in the tree he hid them in, and breathes a relieved breath when he finds them still there. He hides them under his cloak and runs back home. 

When he passes in front of Donghyuck’s house, though, he pauses, overhearing a conversation. 

“You can’t do this.”

“Why not? If those hunters can’t manage to do it, someone else must.” It’s Mark’s voice.

“Because you’ll get yourself killed, that’s why! There’s a reason they waited for it to come to them first, because there’s no chance to win if you get in its territory.”

“That’s what they said, but it didn’t work very well, did it? Look at how many people died tonight.”

“Right.” A pause, someone walking around the room. “So many died already, I don’t want to lose you too.”

“Hey, trust me.” The voice gets softer, Renjun can’t hear it. It’s better this way, it doesn’t sound like something he’s supposed to hear. 

It’s only the last sentence, spoken loud, that reaches his ears.

“Tonight, I’ll kill the yellow-eyed beast.”

｡:°🌙°:｡

When Renjun comes back home, his mother is standing in the kitchen. 

“There’s the young Lee boy in your bed.”

Renjun doesn’t know what to comment on her great observation skills.

“He got hurt yesterday, so I brought him here.”

“I see,” she says, and steps around the table until she can reach him and engulf him in a hug. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

“I’m glad you’re safe too,” Renjun answers. 

They stay there for a minute that seems like an eternity, both crying softly at the thought of what could’ve happened, and then she turns around and pushes a tray in his arms. 

“I prepared some breakfast for the both of you. Make sure he eats if he wants to get back on his feet.”

With a nod and one last kiss on her cheek, Renjun goes back to his room. 

Jeno is still sleeping, but he looks better compared to the previous night. Some color came back to his pale face, and his expression looks more relaxed, peaceful. After he placed the tray on the blanked and switched the clothes on his nightstand with the ones he just retrieved, Renjun sits at Jeno’s side and starts running his fingers through his hair. He doesn’t open his eyes, but the soft scrunch of his nose is so cute that Renjun can’t help bending forward and kissing it. After the first one, he can’t stop, lips leaving soft kisses on his cheeks, his forehead, his eyes.

It’s Jeno, finally awake, that tugs him into a real kiss, lips pressing on his own and arms coming to wrap around him.

“Good morning,” Renjun says, watching in awe as his lover’s smile reaches his eyes. 

“Good morning.”

“I brought breakfast.” Renjun helps him up, carefully placing pillows behind his back. Jeno doesn’t complain much, he seems to be able to move his shoulder already. There must be some wolfish super healing there. “And I think we need to talk.”

Jeno grimaces this time, but he still nods and accepts the tray when Renjun places it on his legs. Walking around the bed, Renjun scoots back under the blankets again, his sheets warm from Jeno’s body heat. 

“So,” Renjun starts, grabbing a piece of sweet bread, “there are two wolves.”

“There have always been two wolves.” Jeno answers, eyes fixed on his plate.

“What do you mean?”

“The lumberjack.”

Renjun remembers the lumberjack. Mostly, he remembers waking up and running to see his body, then feeling sick at the sight. He fails to connect what he has to do with the conversation.

“What about him?”

“He was the first wolf in the village, and the one that bit me, that night when I was running home from your house. I don’t think he was bad, per se, he was always warning people not to stay out. I think he just had a very bad control, he probably would’ve killed me, but the other wolf got there first.”

“And where did it come from?”

“I don’t know. You see, wolves get stronger when they kill one of their kind, so they hunt each other. The yellow-eyed beast came to kill the old wolf, and now it’s back for me.”

“But why now?”

A picture starts forming in Renjun’s head, but he still wants to hear Jeno say it, to be sure he’s not wrongly assuming. They haven’t been eating much, but Jeno started relaxing as he spoke, Renjun never letting go of his hand.

“Because of Mark’s father. I killed him. I didn’t mean to, Renjun, I swear, I only wanted to scare him. I thought, ‘ _ maybe if I scare him enough he’ll move to another fucking village and leave us alone’ _ , but I lost control. It never happened to me before, I never hurt anyone.”

“I know, Jeno. I trust you.” He holds his hand tight, brings it up against his cheek, places a kiss on its back. “Wait a moment.”

The floor is a bit cold, and Renjun is too lazy to find a pair of socks, so he runs all the way to where his coat is hanging, rummaging in the pockets. He comes back to the bed just as fast, and rubs his cold feet on Jeno’s warmer legs. 

“Here,” he says, placing the amulet in Jeno’s hand, “this is yours.”

Jeno looks confused for a moment, then surprised, eyes moving back and forth between Renjun and the piece of wood. It’s smaller compared to how Renjun remembered it, but it’s still as big as Jeno’s hand. There are multiple indents both on the front and the back, making it more difficult to recognize the original image, but when you know what it’s supposed to represent, it’s easy to recognize the lines. 

“I thought I lost it, this is so important for me.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it’s the reason I haven’t gone crazy in all these years. It grounds me. When I was still a kid I couldn’t control my shift, and I couldn’t control myself when I shifted, so I would keep this in my mouth as I ran in the woods. I couldn’t lose it, so I was forced to keep my mouth closed, and I couldn’t bite. I don’t need it anymore but it’s the meaning it carries that’s important.”

“And what is that?”

“You. This amulet reminds me of you, it’s like carrying you with me all the time. It tells me that you’re always there to protect me.”

It’s the blunt sincerity in Jeno’s voice that makes him cry. They’re looking at each other in the eyes, so close that Renjun can feel his breath hit his nose as he speaks, and it’s too much. The first tear flows down his cheek, and another follows soon after. Even as Jeno’s hands wipe them away from his face, more keep on falling.

“I thought — I thought you lost it. I thought you didn’t care anymore about our friendship… about me.”

“No, Renjun, that’s not true.” Jeno holds his face in his hands, preventing him from looking away, to make sure that he can see how honest he is, that his words come from his heart. “I was scared, I didn’t know how to deal with this, how to tell you. I was scared to scare you away. When dad fell ill, I guess, I started thinking that maybe I deserve to be alone.”

Renjun raises his head to look at the ceiling, blinking furiously to prevent another wave of tears.

“You don’t,” he says in the end, a bit choked up. “You don’t deserve that, and you can’t push me away just like that. I don’t care if you turn into a big dog every full moon, it can’t make me love you any less.”

Jeno laughs at that, probably because Renjun’s voice sounds ridiculous after he cries, and he nearly takes offense, but then Jeno is kissing him and whispering an ‘ _ I love you too _ ’ against his lips, and he’s forgiven. 

They finish breakfast, even if it got cold by the time they start eating it for real, and then they settle back under the blankets. Renjun doesn’t want Jeno to put a single foot out of the bed until he can move freely without wincing, and if he’ll achieve that super quickly thanks to his wolf power, all the better. 

Which, by the way, makes another question pop in Renjun’s head.

“How did you get hurt?” He asks, gently touching the bandage on Jeno’s shoulder.

“The other one, it always tries to attack me. In order to get stronger by killing me, it needs to actually fight me, but I never answer its provocations. It’s trying to make me lose control, I think, hurting me, like it did to the old wolf years ago.”

“But you won’t fall for it, right?”

“No, I don’t intend to. That beast, it killed so many other wolves before, it’s way stronger than me. I just hope they catch it before it can cause any more victims. It’s also because of me that it attacks the village, if it can’t make wolf-me lose control, it’s trying to make human-me angry or desperate. We should have some days of peace, I think, since it vented all that violence yesterday.”

Renjun gulps, fragments of a conversation he just heard coming back to his mind.

“Or maybe not.”

The look he receives from Jeno is half worried, half confused.

“What do you mean?”

“Mark. He wants to kill the beast tonight.”

｡:°🌙°:｡

After that confession, Renjun has to actively fight Jeno back under the sheets, because the boy was already on his way to talk Mark out of his idea. It would be useless, if not even Donghyuck managed to convince him, none of them certainly will.

“There’s nothing we can do about it,” he says, pushing Jeno’s hair away from his forehead. “You’re injured and I won’t be much help to anyone. We need to trust him.”

Jeno doesn’t answer, eyes stuck on the ceiling, but he resigns to fall back into a deep slumber, lulled by Renjun’s singing in his ear.

Renjun is not a singer, not really, but he tries, and judging by Jeno’s peaceful expression he doesn’t seem to be too bad. He leaves a kiss on his forehead, then he quietly gets out of bed.

It’s cold outside, but he holds tight to his basket and walks as fast as he can to his destination. His mother looked wary when she saw him put on his boots, but she didn’t complain too much after he gave her an explanation.

“I should go tell Mr Lee that Jeno is fine, he probably hasn’t heard about him yet.”

So, he leaves his footprints in the snow all the way to the ironmongery, until he’s faced with a problem he didn’t think about: Jeno closed the door yesterday, and he doesn’t have the keys. He’s not sure Mr Lee is able to get up and open it for him, so he’s stuck. 

Then he remembers one thing Jeno told him, back when they were kids and they were sneaking in at night to play with swords that were too heavy for their little bodies. When Jeno’s mum was alive, she had the habit of keeping a spare key in the planter next to the door. 

He starts digging with his fingers in the frozen soil, his teeth chattering from the cold, and he ends up actually finding what he was looking for. The key is old, obviously not much needed, but it works just fine as he inserts it in the lock. Once the door finally opens, he quickly sneaks in the room. 

“Jeno? Is that you?”

A voice comes from upstairs, so Renjun goes towards it, taking off his shoes as soon as he’s on the last step. 

“No, Mr Lee, I’m Renjun Huang.”

He finds the man on the bed, sitting against a bunch of pillows. He’s much thinner than he was the last time Renjun saw him, and he’s a completely different person from the man Renjun remembers from his childhood. Here’s a pair of dark circles under his eyes, but the rest of his features may appear much different also because of the deep frown on his face. 

“Why— Where’s Jeno?”

“Jeno is fine, Mr Lee, but he got a bit hurt yesterday and now he’s resting at my house.”

The man visibly relaxes, frown disappearing and leaving space for a relieved smile. He looks a lot like his son when he does.

“I’m glad he’s ok, I was very worried.”

“I can imagine. Can I help you in any way?”

It’s difficult to make Renjun desist when he’s determined to do something, so he ends up not only preparing lunch, but also scrubbing the floor and dusting the furniture.

Jeno, he finds out, is not a bad cleaner, but he doesn’t have an eye for details. 

“Thank you, Renjun. For taking care of both me and Jeno.”

Renjun shakes his head, tying up his boots. 

“It’s nothing, really, you don’t have to thank me.” He takes a big breath, stopping on the first steps. “Mr Lee, one last thing.”

“Yes?”

“Do you have a weapon for defense? Something in silver, possibly.”

Mr Lee’s face darkens, the frown reappearing on his face and Renjun knows, in that moment, that Mr Lee  _ knows _ . He knows about Jeno, he knows everything. Renjun’s hands start sweating, a question popping in the front of his mind, unwanted.  _ Does he resent you, at least a bit? _ He knows that Jeno doesn’t, he wouldn’t fault him for what happened to him that night, but this is his father. Does he wish, down deep, that Renjun never kept Jeno out until late? If they didn’t hang out until dark, on a full moon moreover, Jeno would’ve never been bitten. He gulps, suddenly feeling guilty.

“Why?”

He asks, defensive.

“Because of the yellow-eyed beast. I want to have something to protect myself when it appears again.”

It’s not a lie, Renjun really wants something against the beast. The man must see it in his eyes, or at least he finds that his reasons make sense. He smiles again.

“Sure. I don’t have any finished projects downstairs, but you can open that drawer there.”

He points to the one closest to where Renjun is standing, less than a meter from the stairs. It’s difficult to push it open, but inside there’s an elegant knife, with a handle in dark wood. 

“Thank you so much, I’ll bring it back once the beast is gone.”

“Oh no,” there’s a knowing smile on the man’s face as he waves him goodbye, “you can keep it.”

｡:°🌙°:｡

“Is he awake?”

Is the first thing he asks his mother when he’s back home. The warmth of the fireplace is a relief on his cold skin, it’s like the muscles on his face come back to life. He picks up his boots from the floor, taking them towards his room. She doesn’t seem to notice it, it’s a thing he does sometimes. 

“He was awake for a while a couple of hours ago. He ate something and went back to sleep. Hasn’t woken up since.”

“He’s injured, he must be still very tired. Is father not back yet?”

Renjun hasn’t seen his father since the day before. His mother doesn’t look overly worried, busy as she is filling a couple of bowls with warm soup, but he can still see a deep frown between her eyebrows. 

“No, they’re all guarding the gate. The beast ran into the woods yesterday, they don’t want it to come back inside to hide.”

“Do they know who it is, yet?”

She shooks her head.

“No, there are people missing but some bodies… they weren’t able to recognize them.”

“Oh.”

With a sigh, she places the two bowls on a tray, together with some pieces of bread. 

“Go, now. Bring this to Jeno for when he wakes up again.”

With a  _ thanks _ , Renjun grabs the tray she’s handing him and goes to his room. Only when the door locks behind him, does he start moving faster. He places the tray on his nightstand, checks that Jeno is still sleeping — and leaves a small kiss on his lips because he can, and because he’s scared he won’t see him tomorrow — and looks outside at the sky. The sky has turned dark, and the moon shines its twisted smile down on them. 

Someone will die, tonight, and he hopes it’ll be the beast. 

Tying back up his boots, Renjun thinks back to how his life came down to his moment. Maybe he was always supposed to kill the wolf, he was the only child who wasn’t terrified of it back then. And even if life failed him in height and muscular mass, it still gave him a smart brain and so much knowledge of these woods that most of these foreigners dream to have. Mark didn’t climb these trees as soon as he could walk, Renjun did. 

He didn’t mean it, when he told Jeno that he couldn’t be of help, he was just trying to calm him down. There have been too many deaths in this village in such a short period of time, Renjun won’t let Mark, a friend, be the next on the least. If he won’t kill the beast, he’ll at least try to get them both out of the woods alive.

With one last look towards Jeno’s sleeping form, he climbs out of the window, his new knife held tight against his waist. 

He knows he can’t get out through the gate, but there’s this one way route to the woods he used to take as a kid that he knew would turn out to be useful. It’s an old tree, not too far from his house, but one of its branches extends out of the wall just enough to jump outside. 

Renjun nearly loses an ankle as he tests his climbing abilities, and he knows that if the kid version of himself saw him in that moment he would be very disappointed, but what counts is that he manages to land safely outside, no major injuries in sight. 

There’s a set of footprints on the snow, which tells him Mark has taken his same route, so he rushes to follow them. It’s already night, stars like millions of entertained spectators of their earthly antics, and it’s not safe to be here. 

One thing he didn’t lose growing up is his sense of direction. He has a vague idea of where he is, and he knows he’s running deeper into the forest with every step. It’s not safe, and the more the light of the moon is hidden by the tree branches, the more difficult it is to keep track of where he’s going. 

Then the growl comes, straight in front of him. 

He runs the last steps of the way, until the trees open up in a clearing. Mark’s sword reflects the moonlight, but dark blood drips in the inlaid letters of the blade. It’s not his, it belongs to the beast whose fur is matted up and dirty with mud. The yellow-eyed wolf. Seen from up close, it’s obviously bigger than Jeno, which Renjun didn’t think was possible. Blood is dripping from a gash on its side, but it’s also mapping each step it takes, and that one belongs to Mark. 

Quietly, Renjun grabs his knife, holding it tight in his hand, and watches as the two circle around each other. Mark is sliding to the left, but he’s not putting pressure on his right leg. If the beast pounces now, he won’t be able to avoid it. From the way he’s panting, Renjun’s not sure he’ll be able to fight it either.

When the rumble increases, the wolf getting ready to attack, Renjun acts before he even manages to think.

“No!” he screams, jumping into the clearing.

The beast turns, interest piqued. It growls again, its head slightly turned to the side, and Renjun guesses it recognized him from the winter celebration. After one more evaluating moment, it runs towards him. 

In the back of his mind Renjun registers one important detail: it’s slower. And not only because Mark managed to get it, but its movements as a whole are sluggish. When he sweeps out of its way, it takes a while to stop and turn to him again.

‘ _ It vented all that violence, yesterday, _ ’ Jeno had said, and Renjun realizes with a certain horror that the beast is full. 

That disgusting thing ate so much, it tore apart so many people that now its stomach is weighing it down. When it runs towards him again, Renjun screams and raises his knife. He feels lost in a sea of yellow, those eyes so big as they reach closer to him, so bloodshot that Renjun’s face, reflected in the irises, is surrounded by a red aurea. His own pair of eyes look back at him, terrified, and he only vaguely feels resistance against his wrist when the blade slips between the fur, because his mind is too focused on those rows of teeth coming dangerously close to his neck.

Instinctively, he lets go of the knife and turns his back around, but he knows that it’s useless. His whole life flashes in front of his eyes: the days spent at the bakery; running in the woods; his friends chatting into his ears; his parents. Jeno. How could he ruin everything before they even got a chance to start? A lifetime spent loving someone, and when they finally love you back everything goes to shit. He hopes Mark manages to kill the beast, while it attacks him.

Just as the wolf’s humid breath hits his face, the weight is off of him. He doesn’t register it, the first moment, just lays there on the frozen soil, the moon looking down at him. From his point of view, it looks like it’s smiling. What’s so funny about Renjun maybe dying, he doesn’t know. 

When he finally comes back to the present, it’s not Mark that’s fighting the beast like he supposed. It’s another ball of fur, smaller than the first one and darker, its colors so deep that it looks like a drop of night sky fell on earth to save him.

It’s not the sky, though, this is Jeno. 

The two figures wrestle on the ground, snapping of fangs and growls the soundtrack of a battle too vicious and fast for Renjun to see who has the upper hand. Jeno is smaller, but he’s also quicker to move. 

With trembling hands, he feels the snow around him for his knife, but he can’t find it. He used it to hit the beast, so where could it have gone? 

Then, the two wolves turn around just right for the moonlight to shine a light in his direction. It’s the silver of his knife, still stuck between the beast’s ribs. 

“His side! Jeno, hit his left side!”

He’s not sure he heard him, at first, and he doesn’t think shouting again will help, since it doesn’t look like he’s listening, but then Jeno bumps against the other wolf, head first right where the blade is stuck, and a pained growl fills the clearing. 

Taking advantage of that moment of weakness, Jeno bites the neck of the beast and pins it down. Renjun can see that he’s struggling, the other too big and strong even when in pain to admit defeat.  _ If I grab the knife I can stab it again _ , he thinks,  _ that way I will... _

He can’t finish the thought, a shadow passes above him and in a second, Mark’s sword passes through the wolf’s chest. With one last, broken growl, it finally goes still. He hears the — now familiar — sounds of bones shifting, the body going back to its original form now that it’s dead. Long fur retreats into bloodied skin, snout morphing back in a face, one that doesn’t belong to anyone in the village.

_ Eunhyuck _ , he realizes,  _ that’s one of the hunters! _

His shock is cut short by the sound of Mark pulling out the sword from the corpse, turning back to where Jeno is standing on his four legs, a bit to the side. He doesn’t receive a growl, Jeno’s stance not even defensive, slightly retracting as the boy comes closer.

“No! Mark, stop!” Renjun is on his feet in a second, legs screaming in exhaustion but bringing him to Jeno anyway, and he crouches at his side, arms wrapping around him, hands grasping at his fur. “You can’t do this, he wouldn’t hurt anyone!”

He feels Jeno shift under him, fingers slipping until they manage to hold his naked skin, bringing the boy closer to his chest. With a loud  _ clang _ , the sword drops to the ground, Mark too shocked to hold it up.

“You…” is all he says, eyes so big they nearly fall down from his face.

“Jeno is good, he’s not like that thing!” Renjun says, tears spilling from his eyes, desperate. “He fought the beast from the start, he’s still the same Jeno we know, please don’t do this.”

“No, Renjun, let him.” A hand comes to rest on his own, letting it drop from Jeno’s shoulder as he tries to straighten up from where he’s crouching on the ground. There’s a row of gashes on his chest, where the beast clawed at him. He doesn’t stutter when he speaks, but those deep, dark eyes of his betray all of his pain. “I did fight the beast, but it was me who attacked your father. I didn’t want to kill him but I did it, and you deserve your revenge.”

When Mark crouches to the ground, Renjun knows that he’s picking up his sword, and he holds tighter onto Jeno, ready to shield him. Instead, Mark places a hand on Jeno’s shoulder, and stares at him. 

“My father’s heart couldn’t keep up well, that’s probably what killed him, not you. He died alone like he deserved, anyway.”

Renjun is not sure he understood his words well, but when Mark comes closer to inspect Jeno’s wounds, he relaxes slightly. Maybe he underestimated just how broken the relationship between Mark and his father was. 

He’s interrupted from his thoughts when Jeno whimpers in pain, and two pairs of hands come to help him lie down. Renjun takes his cloak off and places it under him, but he doesn’t like how Jeno looks surrounded by all this red. It makes him look like he’s bleeding out. 

“Someone’s going to come look for us, and we need help to bring him back to the village,” Mark says, getting up. “If they find you like this, though, it will be difficult to explain. Do you have your clothes?”

Jeno nods, telling him where he left them, and Mark runs away between the trees. Once alone, Renjun takes another look at Jeno’s form, and inevitably starts to cry again.

“What are you doing here, you’re injured! You should’ve stayed at home.”

“When I woke up and you weren’t there I knew what you were up to. I couldn’t let you go without me, and I came at the right moment.”

There’s a serious expression on his face, mind going back to how close the beast was to sink its teeth in Renjun’s neck. 

Gently, Renjun grabs his face with both hands. This is the boy he’s been in love with for so long, this boy laying naked in the woods at night, dried blood on his skin but with eyes so pure, so deep and clear. What would he do without him? If he lost him tonight, what’s left of him? 

With a choked sob, he leans down to kiss him, lips on lips and tears falling on Jeno’s cheeks. 

“Renjun.” There’s a hand holding his face, Jeno’s thumb drawing circles on his skin. “When my father is gone I’ll be alone. Stay with me? Forever?”

Trust Renjun’s fate to receive a wedding proposal in a moment like this. With a sound between a laugh and a desperate sob, he hides his face in Jeno’s neck, too busy weeping to give a coherent answer. 

“Yes! Yes, you fool, of course.” When he comes back up, surely looking like a mess, Jeno is looking at him so fondly that he tugs at his ear, hard. “So you better not bleed out on me now, you understand?”

Jeno is too in pain to let out a real laugh, and Mark comes back before they can go on with the conversation. They quickly dress Jeno back up — Renjun comfortingly brushing his hands in his hair as he moans in pain — and then Mark cuts his shirt right where the gashes are, both of them making sure that they look realistic, like the claws ripped the fabric. 

When Jeno’s eyes close, blood loss and exhaustion making him pass out, Renjun freaks out, only vaguely registering the voices coming closer. 

“Mark, you’re here! We found them!”

｡:°🌙°:｡

The hunters depart the following day at dawn, no one out to say goodbye. The village accepts their position, but they’re still not forgiven. People died because they weren’t able to tell that the beast was hiding between them, and Renjun suspects these are the last hunters that are going to be seen in the area. When a bear is coincidentally spotted a couple of villages away, the case is officially closed.

“He was actually very smart,” Jeno comments, a couple of days later, “to hide in the last place someone could think of. He was able to run after other wolves, kill them to become stronger and even get paid. Maybe I should go down that route too.”

“Don’t even think about it.” Renjun feeds him the next spoonful of soup a bit too forcefully. “You wouldn’t be able to hurt a fly, anyway.”

He’s bedridden, doctor’s orders, for at least a month. It’s the least one could expect after such a close encounter with a werewolf, and even if Jeno heals at a faster rate than an average human, there’s no way he’ll be out of the house before it’s believable for him to do so. Renjun moves his bed in the same room as his father so they can keep each other company. It’s something both definitely need.

Other than his usual commissions at the bakery, Renjun spends most of his days at their house, cooking lunch and changing bandages until Jeno heals enough to take care of himself. Before he forgets it, he puts the silver knife in his basket, but when he tries to give it back Jeno refuses to accept it.

“It’s yours, I made it for you years ago.” He’s speaking quietly, not to wake his father from his nap, but Renjun can hear him perfectly fine. “I wanted you to have something to protect you from me, but I was never brave enough to actually give it to you.”

“Silly, I would never need to be protected from you.” His tone softens then, taking Jeno’s hand in his own. “But thank you, I’ll treasure it deeply.”

Jeno absentmindedly caresses Renjun’s ring finger with his thumb, a dumb smile on his face.

“Just wait until I can get to work again, and I’ll make you something so much prettier.”

He probably deserves a punch for making Renjun blush, but he’s still hurt, so he gets a kiss instead.

The village becomes a hot spot for travelers in the area, so much that they have to widen the main street that connects it to the valley. Everyone wants to hear the story of the boys who killed the wolf, and Renjun is eager to share it. He adds new details every time, always different, and after a while people seem to forget where the truth stands in the first place. He’s confident that, given a couple of years, what’s left of the legend of the werewolf will be more fiction than reality. 

Renjun’s parents manage to get enough money to renovate the roof, but the ones that benefit the most are the innkeeper and Jaemin’s father, who even hire new people to help with the growing business. Two boys, both very cute, Yangyang puts an arm around each of their shoulders and introduces them to village life.

About Mark, it’s useless to say that everyone wants to meet him — he’s the one that killed the beast, after all. He even receives a couple of offers to join guilds of “protectors of the people”, which he refuses with no hesitation. Now that he gets to manage it the way he wants to, he seems to be really enjoying working at the shop.

He asks Donghyuck to marry him, too, down on one knee in the middle of the main square, and they fix a date in the early summer, simply because Donghyuck doesn’t want to get married in any other season. 

Renjun doesn’t share the same concerns, and as soon as Jeno is officially back on his two feets and healthy, just as the snow melts away from the roofs, they get married. It’s a beautiful, chilly spring day, and it’s the happiest of Renjun’s life. He gets to dance in his lover’s arms until his feet hurt and, when they get home, Jeno makes love to him the way he was wishing him to do since he first knew what sexual attraction was.

Unfortunately, their happiness is short-lived when they have to say goodbye to Jeno’s father a month later. Death is part of life, they say, and they knew that it was going to happen soon, but none of these reasonings make it hurt any less, and Renjun holds Jeno close as he cries for a long time.

Things eventually get back to normal, as spring flowers leave the place to ripe summer fruits, and the best part of Renjun’s month becomes his nightly walk under the full moon, the only time when Jeno is forced to shift into his other form. He runs around him, tail wagging left and right like the big dog that he is, asking for belly rubs and biting at his sleeve to make him walk faster. He’s Renjun’s secret giant dog, with warm fur to hold to when they fall asleep on the wet grass.

“There’s one thing I’m wondering, still,” he asks one night, while they’re cuddling in their bed. Mark and Donghyuck’s wedding was beautiful, fun and incredibly loud, and Renjun can still hear the echo of the music in his ears. 

“Mh?”

Renjun doesn’t find Jeno’s attention to be focused on him enough, so he uses one of his infallible techniques: he tickles under his chin. He could also sit on his lap and place his hands on that inviting naked chest, but he doesn’t want to get too distracted — _yet_.

“If werewolves get stronger when they kill one another, did you become the strongest wolf out there now that you killed the beast?”

Jeno chuckles, turning on his side so that he can actually face Renjun.

“It doesn’t work like that, Mark was the one who killed it.”

Renjun frowns.

“Aren’t you upset that you didn’t benefit from it?”

“Not really. The stronger you are, the less human you become. I’m actually very content with the way things are now. With my life, with myself,  _ with you _ .”

While Renjun enjoys a good heart to heart conversation, he also can’t deal with his husband when he tries to make him blush, so he turns to stare at the ceiling and sighs dramatically.

“What a pity, that you didn’t get any stronger, it would’ve been…  _ fun _ .”

On time like clockwork, Jeno shifts on top of him, those deep, dark eyes of his intensely staring into his own. He turns away first, defenses crumbling under his lover’s gaze, and feels him leave a trail of kisses down his neck.

“Actually, maybe I did get stronger than I was before. We should definitely check.”

｡:°🌙°:｡

**Author's Note:**

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